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Snatching you from a Hopeless Abyss Emergency Valentines Day Advice Column

It's time to open up the mail bin gain. The storage site has been flooded, so most your recent letters have experienced severe water damage. However, I managed to save a few hundred by baking them on a warm surface and opening them delicately.

Dearest Dale,

I know a girl on the internet who often posts nice pictures of herself doing things with her friends in her livejournal. Should I ask her out?

clicking away,

Present Structures

Dear Present Structures,

What about the apartment?

What about your wife, Present Structures, awake in the morning, a strand of hair bending in a curl above her head and curtains shifting the blades of sunlight with wind like an unzipped yellow jacket? The freckles on her body draw a map to her mouth, apostrophes to a broken sentence when it opens dry.

Below the poor are trudging home to their suburban hell. It is hailing outside. The sky is grey. The wind is sharp.

She is reasserting each one. She smiles in the volley of their gleaming bottoms. Their light chimes in the chandelier.

Your high fi stereo is playing melodious recordings. It is polished by your South American maid. She works in cheap tennis shoes from the mall. You find her attractive when she undoes her dark hair and wears light blue. Her tiny muscles strain to push the dust from your hard wood floor on Wednesdays and Fridays. She is dragging a bucket beside the books on your shelf. Reclining photographs of family members wave to you from there. You are supposed to be out. A halogen lamp lights the room. The sky is crowded with spare clouds. Their image is caught in the wobbling glass of your windows. A peak is all you get. You are afraid she will notice the growing line of warm light from the crack in your door.

You slip out to visit an old friend. He is worried about his finances. He has some property he is rebuilding. This area of the city is getting so expensive it's disgusting. There are no stray dogs anymore. They're all attached to women with yoga mats. Some idiot is riding a bicycle in the snow when your soup arrives.

You still smoke in your elevator though most of the tenants complain. It smells like brushed metals and snow in the carpet. You don't work most days. When she opens the door she is so tall you want to knock her over. She's Belgian. She is like a thick wad of butter from the organic grocery store, some elaborate design of the alps on the foil so you know she’s imported. She falls with a flop in to the frying pan, and sizzles, all fat and yellow. She cooks you eggs in the morning, and butters your toast, spreads strawberry preserves all over them, chokes them in preserves. It looks as if your toast has been stabbed and is dying, that’s how goddamn messily she has smeared your thick slice of toast. You smack her white buttery ass and she walks away from the table, and it wobbles beneath pink panties which bring her tiny pimples out. Her ruddy face goes to inspect her fish, choking on all that water.

your friend,

Dale

Dale,

Have you ever fought a villain of PURE ELECTRICITY? And, if so, what did you do?

knots loosening,

Trapped in the Basement

Dear TITB,

Electricity's natural enemy is water. Have you tried letting the creature feed on the high voltage power lines until it grows immense, and then luring it in to the nearby bay, or reservoir?

I had a dream recently where an old friend had been elected president. I stood in the crowd hopelessly hoping to snap a picture of her with my camera. She was dancing in a ballroom while I was retained with the riff-raff. How could she possibly do this too me? The way she was acting I knew her policies would be unhealthy for the nation. I struck up a conversation with the police officer who was retaining me in the lobby, from my perch down a few stairs I could see the procession of important people whose company I was denied. Somebody was trying to plug something in, if this helps.